Letting 15 year old Son travel to Europe by rail

I know that very well having lost several family members in tragic accidents. They were all sure it would never happen to them but...

Aveline Of course, but since most of us, now and then, return from our adventures safe and well, what is their to worry about. But life runs on blind luck for good and ill.

My family have had their fill of blind bad luck losing close family members in car accidents and also disabilities, but also good luck. Life doesn't come with a guarantee.

Yes JaneJudge. A lot depends on people's experience of what modern life is really like.

I agree with you Aveline but I think we have different lives and live in different areas. Knife crime and violence is an issue where I live. I imagine these people catch trains abroad too 🤷‍♀️ It would be nice is everything was nice but it isn’t.

As I said previously, it's the other people that they might have the severe misfortune to come in contact with that is the problem. The world has changed.

OldFrill, your post expresses my views on the coping mechanisms adolescents develop in order to negotiate the world they live in.
We had the freedom to roam, take risks making dens in empty buildings, rope swings and a where I lived on the coast, we made rafts out of old oil cans and wood begged from local businesses. We cycled, road ponies, wandered miles. How lucky we were but traffic has stopped those adventures
These days children and adolescents rarely have unsupervised freedom but they do have great opportunities like Go Ape, climbing walls, farm visits.
Life changes, people adjust

Aveline

Doubt you'd find it so all these years later. It's a different world. Different people. Different morals and standards and expectations.

Adolescents were born into this world and are much less (if at all) daunted by it than many of their elders. They know no different and have developed relevant coping mechanisms. Most, fortunately, lack the perceived fear that many older people, sadly, seem to live under.

I've read the whole of this thread as it develops and still feel this is a non-story.

I don't understand why I'm even bothering to talk about it really.
I think I'm just amazed at all the finger wagging.

Some of us think it's OK. Some don't.
That's all there is to it.
Nothing to be done either way.
Some 15 year olds will continue to go off on adventures with friends and some (most probably) won't.
🤷‍♂️

Blissful ignorance and blind luck!

I think that is an illusion. There was as much danger aroun din the 60s as there is now, we just did not know about it and if we were in trouble, we had no mobile phones or other ways of summoning help.

Looking back on my travels I had all the confidence that ignorance gives.

Doubt you'd find it so all these years later. It's a different world. Different people. Different morals and standards and expectations.

I have an August birthday, so did GCSEs at 15.75, shortly afterwards I and my 13 year old sister flew out to Malaysia, with little or no supervision, including being grounded overnight in a hotel in Singapore, with no supervision at all because the stewardess nominally in charge of us had flown on to Hong Kong with the plane. Inter railing would have been a doddle.

M0nica I went to university at 17.
I was youngest of my year group at school. I would have been quite a bit younger than Oscar after GCSEs having taken them at 15½

Allira

Some young adults go off to university at 18 and are unable to cope because they have not been allowed to find their own independence.
I remember more than one young person who went off to university and could not cope, begging to be fetched home again. Their parents thought they'd been doing the right thing, transporting them everywhere by car, being careful to protect them but they failed to learn independence.

Couldn't agree more - and there is nothing new about this.

I went up to university in the early 1960s and, as an army brat who had been to boarding school and been flying around the world, virtually unsupervised since I was 15, I was left quite aghast about how unprepared so many students were for independent living. Floods of tears because they couldn't work out how a washing machine worked. I didn't know either but I just pressed buttons until I got the desired result. Frightened of lecturers. I was gobsmacked to find this, now I have become innured to stories of cossetted children who need heir mummies and daddies around to look after them even when they are married and have children of their own.

😂😂😂

Thanks for bringing some much needed humour into this Not Spaghetti.

NotSpaghetti

Thought some of you might not have spotted this:

x.com/AmandaPCraig/status/1828844919647007083?t=BJFLcfYDVyrj6gV2V1Fxlw&s=19

Sir Herbert Gussett. 🤭

Should have said, it's from Private Eye.

Thought some of you might not have spotted this:

x.com/AmandaPCraig/status/1828844919647007083?t=BJFLcfYDVyrj6gV2V1Fxlw&s=19

I don’t understand why people are so ready to accept this must have been a malicious referral motivated by spite. Perhaps it was referred by someone who had a genuine concern about a 15 year old being allowed to travel abroad without an adult, just as many posters on this thread have also expressed. Aren’t we told that child safeguarding is everyone’s business? It’s served a useful purpose in opening a valid debate and demonstrating that we all have very different risk thresholds.

As for ‘how did they get my phone number’ well I assume someone (possibly the person who referred it or possibly another body) gave it to her. How on earth do people think Children’s Services do their job? It’s not as if it’s going to be published for all the world to see.

Grantanow

Don't Social Services have better things to do?

They were doing their job, so no, not really.
I doubt a quick phone call has ruined lives for anyone.

Some young adults go off to university at 18 and are unable to cope because they have not been allowed to find their own independence.
I remember more than one young person who went off to university and could not cope, begging to be fetched home again. Their parents thought they'd been doing the right thing, transporting them everywhere by car, being careful to protect them but they failed to learn independence.

Don't Social Services have better things to do?

NotSpaghetti

MissAdventure the "outrage" I was referring to was evidenced in the media storm about this. I heard some of an LBC phone-in and some callers sounded like it was a hanging offense!

Really?!
Apologies, i didn't know that.

People do get ridiculously het up, don't they?

Yes, Social Care have checked it out and are presumably OK about it. They were obviously right to do this.